Five clerics she knows of who can cast death ward. Can anyone in Korvosa melee against shadows without it?

Maybe if secretly living in Korvosa there were an entire family of native outsiders - ten of them or more - with good Strength and great Dexterity, magic weapons, third-circle sorcerer casting, who all knew shield and mage armor, at least two of them with class levels and the strongest of whom wears a +3 ring of protection. Maybe they could put up a fight.

If only there were such a group of people living in secret from me, Cressida Kroft, to whom many things in Korvosa are as yet unknown.

Especially if they already lived on Endrin Island, and just had to run down Garrison Hill to take their pick of targets.

The Korvosan Guard is the second most Abadaran organization on Golarion, after the literal Church of Abadar. If a family of native outsiders came out of hiding to defend the city, and the city survived, we'd pay them so much you could never finish spending it.

If only such a family secretly existed.

The sort of thing I am doesn't get an afterlife plane when it dies.

When humans die, we're damned to the Abyss.

My sympathy runs as deep as the Jeggare.

It's a shallow river.

Not a dry ditch.


But yeah.

Pretty shallow.

Glorio, I know you're a good man.

That's the alignment I shelled out for.

On the scale of commitment to the bit, where one is “ever does good deeds”, and ten is “heroically charges hundreds of shadows with third level spells and a +2 kukri”, this particular rogue is something like a two or three.

Pack it in, boys, or rather, pack it out – get all our shit on boats, the Arkonas are leaving Korvosa.

Look, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Alright.

I'm sorry too.

Have a Good life.

[Cressida Kroft has disconnected.]
[Pseudohypothetical chat ends.]

Round 82 (12:08:12)

She'll take six more seconds to think.

Round 82 (12:08:12)

The streets of Old Korvosa are packed with panicked Old Korvosans; it's only been a few minutes, and crowds move thirty feet a round. Many haven't even left their homes.

Tuttle air walks up to escape the current, and his three companions follow suit (he cast the communal version of the spell).

No sooner have they risen above the crowd than four ambitious shadows pounce them and are repelled by undeath ward at ten feet.

Darb hadn't cast yet today, other than his buffs. How many spells does that leave him?

Using the 20 point buy array, let’s say Darb has 23 WIS and 14 CHA. (He put his 15 in WIS, +2 for being human, put his 14 in CHA even though putting it in INT seems like it’d make better sense for a finance guy, and he bought a +6 WIS headband – he’s a wealthy dude.)

In terms of spells, he has:

7th – 2

6th – 4

5th – 4

4th – 5

3rd – 6

2nd – 7

1st – 7

spells per day, and 5 uses of Channel Energy.

He can't use melee range cure spells without collapsing his undeath ward. That leaves him 10 mass cure spells above fourth circle. Minus two for teleport and communal airwalk. (Undeath ward was a scroll.)

Each of which can hit up to 13 shadows in theory.

In practice, since none of those shadows can be more than 30 feet apart, he'll be lucky to hit half that number. 5th-circle mass cure light does 17.5 damage on average, with a save for half, so to kill a shadow will take a double dose. 6th-circle mass cure moderate and 7th-circle mass cure serious wounds have a better chance of dropping their targets, but even they won't always.

And then he's got Channel Energy.

At 13th level his channels do 7d6 points of damage, average damage 24.5, thought there's a 10% chance he rolls 18 damage or less.

The DC for Channel Energy isn’t keyed off of a Cleric’s casting stat. Charismatic for a Cleric as Darb may be, his channel is only DC 18. Shadows have Channel Resistance, a +6 bonus to will. They make that save 40% of the time.

0.9 x 0.6 = 54%

Four ambitious shadows pounce them and are repelled by undeath ward at ten feet. Darb channels as a standard action. Two shadows live, two shadows die.

He can do that four more times.

And then cast his eight spells.

And then he can sit on his thumbs until dawn.

-

1. RationalMoron points out that as an Evoker, Salgar Irevotnin in particular should do 5 more points of damage with Intense Spells - on an average roll, just barely enough to kill a shadow. The broader point - that a fireball can't hit two shadows standing on opposite sides of a wide avenue, and that even powerful wizards (Evokers below 10th level, and non-evokers of any level) will not typically kill the shadows they cast fireballs upon - unfortunately stands.

There are spells which mightier wizards than the Dean of Evocation can cast (should they have those evocations prepared) which do more d6s of damage (albeit typically in a much smaller area of effect). But those cones of cold and chains of lightning will be spent even faster than Salgar runs out his <10 fireballs. ↩

The 12th level fighters and rogue in their party make a slightly better showing. Unspecialized in archery, they're worse at it than the Sable Company marines overhead, and have all the same difficulties finding opponents and dropping them. But at point blank range they can kill the two shadows Tuttle damaged, and then look to contribute damage to a shadow some other Korvosan will hopefully take out down the line.

"Yes."

Gods know why she's asking, but then Cressida Kroft is always ten steps ahead of everyone else.

The Field Marshall will come up with a plan, it will work swimingly, and in retrospect it will look like the single obvious thing to do when your city is invaded by shadows.